Pardon our Dust

I fear it just as much as my father did, though his fear was that people would stop doing crazy things and turn normal. Nice for them, perhaps, but what would Jack write about?

In my case, I worry that the usual bastards will give up their bastardry, but guess what? There’s absolutely no hint, today, that that’s happening.

I bring you our loveable old friends the Koch brothers, who inherited their empire from their father as well as his rabid conservatism (Papa was a founder of the John Birch Society, as well as an oilman). So the Koch brothers have significantly expanded their empire, and have moved into production of the tar sand oil of Alberta, Canada.

What is tar sand oil? It’s technically called bitumen, and here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Bitumen is a thick, sticky form of hydrocarbon, so heavy and viscous (thick) that it will not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons. At room temperature, it is much like cold molasses"

There are tar sand deposits all over Montana and North Dakota, as well as vast amounts of the stuff in Alberta. But because of the viscosity, the tar sands need to be processed before they can be refined in conventional refineries. And how does the tar sand oil get from Alberta or North Dakota to the pre-processing plant in Whiting, Indiana?

Well, there’s the famous Keystone Pipeline XL, two phases of which are completed, one is under construction, and the fourth is pending approval by the US government. But it’s important to know—however ugly most petroleum products are, the tar sands are especially toxic: here’s an excerpt from The New York Times from an article from January of this year:

The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.

Still not convinced? Well, consider the town of Lac-Mégantic, in which a train carrying the tar sands derailed, caused a huge explosion, and killed 47 people. Oh, and here’s more information:

Underneath the remaining buildings, cleanup crews have discovered that much of Lac-Mégantic's downtown is saturated with heavy metals — lead, arsenic, copper — and that thick crude oil. Three months after the explosion, they are still pumping spilled crude oil and chemicals from underneath what used to be a gorgeous lakefront street.

OK—so the tar sand oil is being processed in Indiana—but what about the by-products of the processing? Called petroleum coke—also known as pet coke—in Indiana, only 5 days of the stuff can be stored. And according to one article:

Under the company's federal permit and consent decree with the U.S. EPA, the waste is surrounded by 40-foot walls; an enclosed conveyor and loading system is equipped with wind screens and water sprayers to keep dust down.

Since the Whiting facility is producing more pet coke than it can store, it’s shipping the stuff to a facility on the Southeast side of Chicago—a poor area of town. And guess who owns the facility, called KCBX? Right—the you-know-whos….

And guess what? The same stuff that is so toxic that it has to be enclosed over in Indiana? Here’s what Koch Chemical spokesman Paul Baltzer (and however much they’re paying him, it’s not enough) has to say:

But in letters to the Illinois EPA, the company said "it is not feasible" to cover the piles because "stockpile locations and usage patterns are constantly changing."

"KCBX puts a priority on regulatory compliance and managing operations in a manner that protects the health and safety of employees, the community, and the environment," Baltzer said in a statement.

Well, as you can see in the clip below—the skies over the Southeast side of Chicago are frequently black, and so people are keeping their kids inside. Which, if you have ever endured a Chicago summer, would be intolerable if you didn’t have air conditioning. But as it happens, many people in Chicago—especially poor and lower-middle class people, because of course that’s what these people are—don’t have air conditioning.

So a whole bunch of poor people are getting exposed to some really toxic stuff, all for the benefit of some rich guys who are getting richer by the nanosecond and who are using that money to buy state legislatures to ensure that laws are vaguely written, that environmental regulation is weakened, and that a reactionary point of view is pushed down our throats.

And guess what? It’s not the first time. Here’s what the pet coke situation looked like in Detroit, before the mayor ordered them to be removed.

And yes, the Koch brothers own that facility, too….

Scrambling to Keep Up

“I can be the president of the United States or I can control Alice, but I cannot possibly do both,” famously said Teddy Roosevelt about his hellion daughter. And every father in America knew just what he meant.

And that’s the way I feel about Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Consider—I emailed myself an article my friend Gary posted on Facebook; here’s the headline: 
    

Wisconsin Prepares to Hand Half-Million in Taxpayer Funds to Koch-Tied GOP Lobby Shop

OK—that was something I had to check out. But it was late, my brain was tired; I sent it off to my inbox to be dealt with in the morning. Well, it’s 11:50, and where have I spent the morning? Right up there in Wisconsin—virtually—looking at, among other things, a map of frac sand mines and production centers.

Sorry, I couldn’t copy / paste the map, but here’s the link.

In Iguanas, I reported that South Western Wisconsin is known as the Drift-less Area, so called because the glaciers never rolled into the area. So it’s hillier, and there are curious rocks, the Niagara dolomite limestone, or some such thing. And that’s precisely the area where there were a few sand mines, because Wisconsin is one of the few, or at least one of the richest, places to produce this:

OK—that’s frac sand, or “silica sand: smooth, round grains of almost pure quartz that can be found in lower Wisconsin’s sandstone bluffs.”

A couple years ago, Wisconsin had fewer than ten sand mines; today, it has over one hundred. And here’s what they look like:

And what’s the big deal with frac sand? Well, it’s the only sand you can use for fracking, a process which involves drilling extremely deep vertically, then drilling horizontally several lines, and then forcing a water mixed with frac sand at extremely high pressure. The water / sand mixture fractures (hence the name, get it?) the shale and natural gas is released.

Those fussy environmentalists, of course, have various quibbles. The process requires enormous amounts of water, and thus lowers the water tables, and makes irrigation all the more difficult. Oh, and it also produces some really gunky byproducts—water and sand and a lot of toxic petrochemicals. And where do you put that? Into the river? Dump it on the ground, or in ponds?

Never mind—says the industry. It produces natural gas, and that’s a clean fuel, and don’t we want to be energy independent?

OK—to get at all this sand, the Koch brothers, owners of Koch Industries (a huge petrochemical concern), had to run up to Wisconsin and find someone they could work with. And they certainly did—Scott Walker, who promised to relax Wisconsin’s fussy environmental regulations. How fussy were they? Quite a bit like Minnesota’s, which also has the frac sand deposits. And how many mines / processing plants does Minnesota have today? A handful.

Which tells you how effectively Walker made a “business-friendly” environment in Wisconsin.

So what’s the problem, you say. We create all this sand, ship it off to North Dakota or Texas. That’s their problem, right?

Well, beyond being just a bit callous…no.

“It was clanging railroad cars at night, underground blasting that put cracks in the walls of peoples’ kitchens,” she said. “I had emails that said, ‘I don’t know what they’re doing, but there’s sand all over the inside of my house.’” 

That’s what Kathleen Vinehout, a Wisconsin state senator, said.

Right—sand all over your house is an annoyance. But what about sand in your lungs?

These particles are associated with an increased risk of a battery of illnesses that Crispin Pierce, a professor of environmental public health at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, ticked off for me: “Silicosis, bronchitis, tuberculosis, chronic pulmonary diseases—it’s a really nasty, toxic substance.”

Well, there are emission standards for each mine—but they measure the emissions from one mine only. And what happens when there are three mines, one processing plant, and trucks filled with the stuff—all in one area? Sadly, because this industry is so new—no one knows. So we’ll find out in a generation or so, when Wisconsinites all start wheezing (in the Drift-less Area, of course).

(Added value to Wisconsinites in that area—definitely consider taking up smoking, because guess what? Your lungs are fucked, anyway….)

Oh, and there are social costs, too. The mining companies are coming along waving huge checks at people who will either sell or lease their land. Here’s one account:

She was offered more than $100,000 from the mining company EOG Resources Inc. to move but declined, citing high moving costs and a connection with the area. Since then, she said, her home value has dropped by about half, to around $60,000. The mine provides subsidies for lower property values, but Sonnentag said her property is too far away to qualify.

What happened? Reading further on in the story, it’s clear. She said “no,” her neighbor said “yes.” So she saw the value of her property fall, due to the mine, which was too far away to qualify for the mine subsidy program.

From the same story:

As the mines have been built, a chasm between some neighbors has widened.

"Why should I have to move because my neighbor wants to be selfish?" said Sonnentag. "If I had trouble, I always used to know I could count on my neighbors.

"Not anymore. Now, it's the sand people versus the anti-sand people."

Remember how I was going to tell you about the half million the State is going to give a Koch brother lobbying group?

And remember Teddy Roosevelt and his daughter—Alice ?

See what I mean?